Found: universe’s missing metal

WITH the nature of dark matter still a mystery, it often seems we have misplaced most of the universe. At least the lesser-known problem of the universe’s missing metal may soon be solved, now that large amounts of zinc have shown up in a distant galaxy.

Nearby galaxies have less than 20 per cent of the zinc that theory predicts. Now Varsha Kulkarni at the University of South Carolina in Columbia has been studying metal missing from objects known as Lyman-alpha galaxies.

Kulkarni and her colleagues used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer on Mount Paranal in Chile to study a …

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